Recommendation

The present revised recommendation relates to an earlier application for restitution from C.F. Koenigs of Amsterdam (hereinafter referred to as the applicant). In it she requested the return of 34 paintings and 37 works on paper (hereinafter also referred to as the drawings) that are said to have been in the possession of her grandfather, the banker and art collector Franz Wilhelm Koenigs (hereinafter referred to as Koenigs). In letters dated 3 May 2002 and 26 November 2002, the State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science (hereinafter referred to as the State Secretary) submitted the application to the Restitutions Committee (hereinafter referred to as the Committee) with a request for advice. The Committee issued its advice to the State Secretary (RC 1.6) on 3 November 2003. On 10 December 2003 the State Secretary decided to reject the application, in accordance with the advice. Since then the applicant has voiced objections to the content of the advice and the way it was generated. She also asserts that new facts put the case in a different light. Op 13 December 2010 the State Secretary asked the Committee to issue revised advice on the basis of the information designated by the applicant as new facts. We refer to the advice about case number RC 1.6 for the inventory numbers of the claimed works. In the current procedure the applicant is also acting on behalf of a number of members of the family, namely Mr AA, Ms BB, Ms CC, Ms DD and Ms EE.

II – The procedure

II.1. The immediate reason for the present procedure is the request from the State Secretary of 13 December 2010, which in turn was based in part on the report of the National Ombudsman dated 8 November 2010 (report number 2010/315).

II.2. The Committee points out the following by way of background. Subsequent to the request for restitution RC 1.6 in 2002, on 23 May 2005 the applicant requested the return of 139 drawings and three etchings that had been sent on 9 July 2004 from Kiev, Ukraine, back to the Netherlands and that are currently part of the NK collection. In a letter of 13 July 2005 the State Secretary asked the Committee for advice about this request, which was registered by the Committee under number RC 1.35. During the procedure relating to RC 1.35 the applicant then requested both the Committee and Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to revise the earlier advice and the 2003 decision about RC 1.6. In connection with this, in a letter of 24 April 2007 the Minister of Education, Culture and Science (hereinafter referred to as the Minister) asked the Committee to include the material described by the applicant as new facts in its advice about RC 1.35. The results of the investigation of the facts relating to RC 1.35, including documents that were new in respect of RC 1.6, were then recorded in a draft investigation report dated 3 March 2008, which was sent to the applicant on 13 March 2008. The applicant responded to the content of the report on 3 July 2008. There was a hearing on 6 October 2008, on the basis of which the applicant submitted a further response on 25 November 2008. It emerged afterwards that the applicant had already submitted a complaint about the Minister to the National Ombudsman on 16 July 2008. Subsequent to this she requested the Committee to defer advising about RC 1.35 until the National Ombudsman issued a report. In a letter of 16 December 2008 the Committee told the applicant that it would put the case on hold during the National Ombudsman’s handling of the complaint.

II.3. On 8 November 2010 the National Ombudsman issued a report in regard to the complaint submitted by the applicant. On the basis of the National Ombudsman’s recommendations, in a letter of 13 December 2010 the State Secretary withdrew the request submitted to the Committee in a letter dated 24 April 2007 to include new facts in RC 1.35. Instead the State Secretary requested the Committee to advise about the facts designated by the applicant as ‘nova’ (new facts) in the context of her request to revise RC 1.6. On 18 January 2011 the Committee informed the applicant and the Minister that it would put this request for advice in a separate file with the number RC 4.123. The Committee also advised the applicant that it would resume the procedure relating to RC 1.35. At the same time the applicant was given the opportunity to provide all the information relevant to the assessment of the request. Initially the applicant requested a postponement, but in a letter dated 11 April 2011 she asked the Committee to defer RC 1.35 until the present advice about RC 4.123 was issued. On 4 May 2011 the Committee once again deferred the active handling of RC 1.35.

II.4. In a letter of 19 October 2011 the Committee advised the applicant that it interpreted the letter from the State Secretary of 13 December 2010 as a request for revised advice about RC 1.6 and gave her detailed information about the procedure. When handling a request for revised advice, the Committee asks applicants to explain the background of the request in the light of the criteria referred to under I. In this context the Committee requested the applicant to provide the documents relevant to the assessment of the current request as a whole. Upon request, to that end an extra long period of over five months was specified, until 30 March 2012. The applicant subsequently asked twice for deferment of the deadline for responding. The Committee granted deferment, initially until 1 September 2012 and later to 19 November 2012, so the applicant was given 13 months. The applicant submitted the documents supporting her request on the latter date. On 7 December 2012 she delivered new copies to replace the files of documents submitted on 19 November 2012 plus a few additional documents.

II.5. In a letter of 21 March 2013 the applicant sent the Committee an exchange of letters with the request to add them to the earlier file. In response the Committee advised the applicant that it would add these letters to its file, and it also pointed out that it was no longer possible to submit new documents. In a letter of 6 May 2013 the applicant objected to this and argued that the Committee had not specified a clear deadline for submitting documents. She also asked the Committee to permit her to submit within a period of three and a half months the results of completed and ongoing investigations in regard to six subjects specified in detail. The Committee granted this request subject to the condition that subsequent submissions would really be limited to the six said subjects and also that they would jointly not exceed 50 pages. On 3 July 2013 the applicant objected to this and asked for these conditions to be dropped. The Committee rejected this request on 12 July 2013.

II.6. On 23 August 2013 the applicant provided the additional information, which comprised a letter with two enclosures ‘Addition T4’ and ‘Addition T5’ relating to two of the six subjects referred to above, a report entitled ‘Recherchebericht zum Tod von Franz Koenigs’ about the circumstances Franz Koenigs’s death, and five powers of attorney. In her letter the applicant stated that in her opinion the requirements for a proper procedure had not been complied with because both sides had not been listened to, unjustified restrictions had been specified in regard to the material to be submitted, no draft report had been written, and no hearing had been organized. And, as she had also done in her letter of 6 May 2013, she requested the Committee to prepare a draft report and organize a hearing.

II.7. First the Committee states that comprehensive advice about the present case was issued on 3 November 2003. An investigation report was written and a hearing was organized to that end. A request for revised advice, such as the current request, has a limited purpose (see I – Assessment framework). Organizing another hearing and writing a new draft report are not set parts of how such a request is handled. The Committee has not seen any reasons for these activities on the grounds of the specific circumstances of the case (see also below under II.9).

II.8. In order to enable the Committee to study and evaluate the documents supporting the request in conjunction with each other, the applicant was expressly asked to provide her input as a whole (II.4). A period of thirteen months was granted to that end, and after that a further opportunity was given to submit documents within certain generous limits (see II.5). The Committee is responsible for the execution of a proper procedure, which means among other things that limitations can be specified for the provision of further documents. In view of what the applicant had already submitted, the Committee thinks a restriction to 50 pages is not unreasonable.

II.9. The Committee considers the documents of 7 December 2012, 21 March 2013 and 23 August 2013 to jointly be the basis for the request for revised advice (see also ‘explanation’ below). The explanation contains a response to the earlier hearing and reporting about RC 1.6, as well as a comprehensive description of the applicant’s opinion about other subjects, including the procedure, the hearing and the draft report concerning RC 1.35. This latter case has been submitted for advice and is currently still awaiting consideration, and a significant part of it relates to the same complex of facts as the present advice (see also II.2 and III). In view of the above, the Committee cannot concur with the applicant’s assertion that both sides have not been heard. The Committee takes the view that the applicant has been given every opportunity to bring the matters that she considers important to the Committee’s attention and to explain her position with regard to them.

II.10. On 7 October 2013 the applicant, also on behalf of the family members represented by her, summoned the State of the Netherlands to appear in preliminary relief proceedings in the preliminary injunction court in The Hague in regard to the claim that the Committee, or the State, should be ordered to see to it that in this case – to put it briefly – a hearing is organized and that a draft report or draft advice is sent to them so that they can comment on it. In response to this the Committee postponed issuing the present advice until the preliminary injunction court made a ruling. In its judgment dated 12 November 2013, the preliminary injunction court rejected the claims. After this the Committee resumed the preparation of its advice.

II.11. The Committee understands that the applicant intends to submit an application to the court in Rotterdam for a provisional experts’ statement to be issued. With reference to point II.9, last sentence, the Committee sees no reason to suspend the handling of the present request for advice again. Furthermore, as emerges from articles 202 to 207 inclusive of the Code of Civil Procedure, such a statement serves as evidence in legal proceedings that have yet to be or have been instituted, and that is not relevant in the present advice to the Minister.

IV – The facts

IV.1. Koenigs was born in Kierberg, Germany, on 3 September 1881. In 1920 he founded N.V. Rhodius Koenigs Handelmaatschappij together with a nephew. The business was established in Amsterdam. A few years later Koenigs and his wife Anna Countess of Kalckreuth (hereinafter referred to as Anna Koenigs) and their children moved permanently to the Netherlands. Neither of them was of Jewish descent. Koenigs was granted Dutch citizenship in 1939.

IV.2. During the nineteen-twenties Koenigs started what was to become a large collection of drawings and paintings. The collection of drawings, also known as the Koenigs collection, was of art historical importance.

IV.3. It can be deduced from a declaration that Koenigs wrote by hand and signed on 9 September 1931 that he entered into an agreement with the Amsterdam bank N.V. Bankierskantoor Lisser & Rosenkranz (hereinafter referred to as L&R). He was friends with S. Kramarsky, the Jewish managing director. In the declaration Koenigs wrote to L&R: ‘Sie haben mir namens einer Gruppe zugesagt an der Capital erhöhung von Rhodius Koenigs Handel Mij im Ausmass von fl. 1.500.000,- mitzuwirken’. He also wrote that he was transferring ownership of his drawing collection, as present in his home in Haarlem, to L&R as security for repayment. The agreement between Koenigs and L&R was probably formalized a few weeks later by, among other things, a legal instrument dated 2 October 1931, the contents of which are not known to the Committee.

IV.4. A new agreement between Koenigs and L&R was recorded in a registered private legal instrument dated 1 June 1935, in which it was expressly stated that the old agreements lapsed. This document was not available to the Committee when the advice with regard to RC 1.6 was formulated. It was submitted in 2008 by Koenigs’s son FF as part of the RC 1.35 procedure. It states that Koenigs acknowledged borrowing a sum of NLG 1,375,000 and GBP 17,000 at an interest rate of 4% for a term of 5 years. Under the agreement, Koenigs transferred ownership of his drawing and painting collection, as specified on a list accompanying the legal instrument, to L&R. The list, which according to the text must originally have been appended to the legal instrument of 1 June 1935, is currently missing, but it is clear from the text of the agreement that the paintings and drawings concerned had been lent shortly beforehand to Museum Boymans in Rotterdam and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Koenigs and L&R furthermore agreed that Koenigs was entitled to repay part or all of the loan at any time, while L&R would be entitled to sell the collection publicly or privately and to recover the proceeds upon expiry of the term (31 May 1940) or upon the liquidation of L&R.

IV.5. Starting in 1939, close to the expiry of the agreed term and under the growing threat of war, Koenigs and the L&R bank, through the mediation of art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, conducted negotiations with Dirk Hannema, director of Museum Boymans. It can be deduced from the correspondence that apparently Koenigs’s objective was to house the drawing collection as one entity, under his name, permanently in Museum Boymans. The wealthy Rotterdam businessmen D.G. van Beuningen and W. van der Vorm were involved in the discussions as financiers. Koenigs kept other interested parties at arm’s length. It can be concluded from a letter drafted by Jacques Goudstikker in around February 1940 and intended for Hannema that Koenigs was prepared to make far-reaching concessions in order to ensure that the collection continued to be retained for the museum. But the negotiations broke down. Meanwhile Koenigs and L&R made plans to transport the collection abroad.

IV.6. L&R was liquidated on 2 April 1940. The intention was to safeguard the bank, which had a mainly Jewish board, from German interference in the event of a German attack. Koenigs, who was present as a fellow shareholder at the meeting of shareholders in which it was decided by acclamation to do so, would have been closely involved in the development and further implementation of the plans.

IV.7. It is stated in two registered private legal instruments of 2 April 1940, which were co-signed by Koenigs, that as of 2 April 1940 Koenigs had a debit balance in the current account relationship entered into between him and L&R, including interest, of NLG 1,662,915.14 in addition to GBP 20,559.13s.7d. These two instruments were also not available to the Committee during its formulation of advice for RC 1.6. They were handed over by FF in 2008 in connection with RC 1.35.

IV.8. It is stated in the first instrument, which is a further agreement about the main part of the debt and the drawing collection, that the ‘parties have been consulting each other about partial settlement of Koenigs’s debt to Lisser & Rosenkranz’ and that the parties have agreed the following in this regard: ‘As partial settlement of his said debt in the amount of NLG 1,250,000.-, Koenigs gives Lisser & Rosenkranz as payment, and the latter herewith accepts as payment, the collection of drawings that has been lent by Koenigs to Museum Boymans in Rotterdam, as accurately specified on the list attached to the aforementioned instrument of 1 June 1935 and authenticated by both parties. Koenigs therefore herewith transfers the full and unencumbered ownership of the said drawings to Lisser & Rosenkranz, and Lisser & Rosenkranz accepts this transfer of ownership, in return for which it discharges Koenigs from NLG 1,250,000.- of his said debt.’

IV.9. It is stated in the second instrument, which is a further agreement relating to the paintings, that the ‘parties have been consulting each other about the settlement of Koenigs’s remaining debt to Lisser & Rosenkranz’ and that the parties have agreed the following in this regard: ‘As settlement of his residual said debt in the amount of NLG 412,915.14 and GBP 20,559.13s.7d, Koenigs gives Lisser & Rosenkranz as payment, and the latter herewith accepts as payment, the paintings as accurately specified on the list attached to the aforementioned instrument of 1 June 1935 and authenticated by both parties. Koenigs therefore herewith transfers the full and unencumbered ownership of the said paintings to Lisser & Rosenkranz, and Lisser & Rosenkranz accepts this transfer of ownership, in return for which it discharges Koenigs from the aforementioned residual of his said debt.’

IV.10. It emerges from surviving correspondence that L&R and Koenigs each separately informed Museum Boymans that same day that the drawing collection had become the property of the L&R bank. Koenigs also wrote that, in view of the absence of a response from the museum, it had been necessary for him to use the drawings as payment, as a result of which the drawings had become the ‘full and unencumbered property’ of L&R, and that he had made the drawings completely available to L&R ‘in so far as necessary by terminating the loan of them to you’. L&R advised the museum that it intended to have the drawings removed that same week by the forwarding agent.

IV.11. There was further consultation after 2 April 1940 between L&R ( represented by Jacques Goudstikker), Museum Boymans ( represented by its director Dirk Hannema) and D.G. van Beuningen. A surviving letter of 9 April 1940 from Hannema to L&R reveals that Koenigs was also present at these discussions. L&R continued to take Koenigs’s wishes into account after 2 April 1940, as can be seen from a letter to Goudstikker from L&R dated 8 April 1940: ‘Please bear in mind that we want to make the greatest possible concession to Museum Boymans as regards the price on the grounds of both national considerations and our desire to respect the wishes of the previous owner [Koenigs, RC].’

IV.12. On 9 April 1940 L&R sent written confirmation to Van Beuningen that it had sold him the drawing collection as well as 12 paintings for NLG 1 million. In the letter L&R wrote: ‘We have noted with thanks your promise that the aforementioned collections of drawings and paintings will continue to bear the existing name of the “F. Koenigs Collection” for as long as they remain exhibited in Museum Boymans.’

IV.13. This was followed by congratulations all round. The board of L&R expressed its satisfaction about the fact it had been able to contribute to ‘the retention of this important collection for the Netherlands and Museum Boymans’. The undertaking by Van Beuningen to keep the name of Koenigs linked to the collection ‘also fulfilled the wish of Mr Koenigs’, added L&R. On 12 April 1940 Hannema assured Koenigs ‘that the collection, with which your name will always be associated, will also be looked after with the greatest care in the future’. On 17 April 1940 Koenigs wrote to Hannema saying that: ‘We are also pleased that the collection has remained in Holland and naturally we prefer to see it in Museum Boymans’. As an expression of his feelings, Koenigs donated two drawings by Carpaccio to the museum to supplement the collection. On 19 April 1940 Hannema wrote to L&R saying he was happy that ‘the entire Koenigs collection…is staying in Museum Boymans’ and he thanked the L&R bank’s board for the cooperation.

IV.14. In his biography of D.G. van Beuningen, Harry van Wijnen (p 317) writes that on 28 April 1940 – a few weeks after the transaction between L&R and Van Beuningen on 9 April 1940, but still before the German invasion – there was an exploratory meeting in The Hague between Van Beuningen’s son-in-law, Lucas Peterich, and the German Dr Hans Posse, who purchased art on behalf of Adolf Hitler for the Führer Museum that was to be established in Linz. On 5 August 1940 Peterich reminded Posse of this discussion in a letter. In it he stated that at the time he assumed that his father-in-law did not want to sell anything, but ‘so glaube ich heute, daβ er jetzt vielleicht doch dazu bereit sein würde, wenn Sie ein gutes Angebot auf die Zeichnungen der Sammlung Königs machen könnten’. During the course of the following months Peterich negotiated with Posse on behalf of Van Beuningen about the purchase of part of the drawing collection.

IV.15. At the beginning of December 1940 Van Beuningen sold some 528 drawings to Posse for NLG 1.4 million. On 9 December 1940 Hannema told a member of the board of trustees of the Museum Boymans Foundation about this sale, namely that, ‘Mr van Beuningen had had a plan to sell for a certain sum of money a part of the Koenigs collection, which he had acquired before the war. This transaction has already taken place’. Some 37 of these drawings were recovered after the war and at the end of the nineteen-eighties they were sent back, primarily from the former German Democratic Republic, after which they became part of the NK collection. These 37 drawings are subjects of the current advice. Van Beuningen donated the other drawings, numbering approximately 2,000, and eight paintings to the Museum Boymans Foundation.

IV.16. The paintings that were not part of the agreement of 9 April 1940 between L&R and Van Beuningen were removed from Museum Boymans by Goudstikker. It is uncertain where these works were taken. It is also not clear whether further agreements about these works were made between Koenigs and L&R after 2 April 1940 and, if so, what their import was. In a letter dated 10 December 1946, that was handed over by the applicant in regard to the current request, L&R wrote that on 1 May 1940 it had 35 paintings in its possession for Koenigs, while Koenigs owed the bank NLG 706,088.47 plus GBP 20,559.13s.7d, adding up to a total of NLG 844,557.87. This letter then summarizes the works concerned. Number 14 is Cadmus Sowing the Dragon’s Teeth by P.P. Rubens, the work currently being claimed. It is stated in the letter that this painting was handed over on the instructions of Mr F. Koenigs for NLG 11,600. It emerges from surviving documentation that Cadmus Sowing the Dragon’s Teeth was then sold at the end of April or beginning of May 1940 to a Dutch couple, Mr and Mrs De Bruijn, through the J. Goudstikker gallery. Goudstikker gave the proceeds to L&R. This work of art was bequeathed to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 1961, thus becoming part of the Dutch National Art Collection.

IV.17. In its letter of 10 December 1946 L&R also stated that 31 paintings were handed over for NLG 800,000. On an unknown date, probably in June 1940, they were purchased by the German banker Alois Miedl. Twenty-seven of these 31 paintings are subjects of the current advice. A report written in 1952 by the lawyer A.E.D. von Saher entitled ‘N.V. Kunsthandel J. Goudstikker: overview of events during the period from 31 December 1939 to April 1952’ says about this sale that, ‘In June 1940 Miedl bought Koenigs’s Rubens collection from him for NLG 800,000’. A post-war report about the Miedl hearings states the following. ‘The sale took place in the garden of the Lisser Rosencranz Bank in the presence of Florsheim, the deputy director in the absence of Kramarsky who had left for America…Koenigs at first asked 800.000 and finally accepted 700.000. Miedl admits that this was very cheap but says Koenigs was no Jew and was eager to sell to clear himself of his financial obligations because the banks in Holland would not take pictures as security…Koenigs was actually paid 800.000 gulden by Miedl, and Flörsheim supplied the difference.’

IV.18. After this there were various further business contacts between Koenigs and Miedl. On 14 September 1940, in the presence of the notary A. van den Bergh in Amsterdam, the firm of ‘Kunsthandel voorheen J. Goudstikker N.V.’ was founded. Alois Miedl traded art during the war through this company. Koenigs was one of the founders besides Miedl. He participated in the issued capital by purchasing five of the 600 shares. Miedl’s bank, N.V. Buitenlandsche Bankvereniging (BBV), also acquired a substantial number of L&R shares in the course of 1940. Op 13 December 1945 H.H.F. Herrndorf, one of L&R’s liquidators, said the following about this matter. ‘As a very good friend, Mr Koenigs felt obliged to champion the interests of L&R and to actually protect it. The relationship with and the friendly feelings for L&R. resulted in Rhodius Koenigs buying 540 shares from Mr F [Flörsheim, RC] on 9-9-’40 at 75 %. By then it was clear to Mr Koenigs that his position was not strong enough to protect L&R properly. The upshot of these considerations, together the general situation, was the acquisition of the shares by BBV…As a consequence of the steps that had already been taken, it seemed necessary to Mr Koenigs that the 687 shares of Mr S. Kramarsky should also change hands. He was convinced that this would be the best way to serve the interests of his friend Kramarsky, and the consequence was that BBV took over L&R.’

IV.19. Koenigs died on 6 May 1941 at a railway station in Cologne, Germany.

IV.20. In May 1942, a year after Koenigs’s sudden death, his widow Anna Koenigs wrote to Hannema saying, ‘I’m glad about everything that stayed in Museum Boymans and in the Netherlands, because it was always my husband’s wish that his collection should remain in our country.’ In response to a declaration obligation announced by the authorities, after the war Anna Koenigs filled in 31 SNK (Netherlands Art Property Foundation) declaration forms, in which she reported the sale of 31 paintings by Koenigs to A. Miedl in the ‘summer of 1940’. There was a pre-printed line for declaring the nature of the loss of possession: ‘As a result of confiscation / theft / forced/voluntary sale, it came into the possession of’. She crossed out the first three options, and in so going declared that according to her it was a voluntary sale.

IV.21. A few years after the war one or more of Koenigs’s heirs apparently had an investigation carried out in order to establish whether Van Beuningen could be called to account for reselling works from the collection to Posse. At the time the idea was dropped because of negative legal advice to the effect that ‘the agreement concerned [between L&R in liquidation and Van Beuningen, RC] created legal relationships between Mr van Beuningen and the aforementioned N.V. only, and a possible promise to preserve the Koenigs collection and to continue the loan to Boymans Museum does not have the character of a third-party clause, the fulfilment of which could be enforced at law by the heirs’ (letter from the lawyer Max Meijer to FF of 19 August 1953).

VI – Twelve specific arguments put forward by the applicant

VI.1. In her explanation, the applicant specified at length her objections as referred to above in the form of twelve points under the heading ‘new facts’. In the interests of precise and complete handling of her request, the Committee deems it desirable to go through these twelve points.

VI.2. The first point the applicant raises is that it follows from article 1 of the Constitution and the principle of equality it contains that the reversal of the burden of proof, as referred to in the policy framework, should also apply to ‘population groups persecuted by the Nazis’ other than Jews, Sinti and Roma. She comments here as follows: ‘Making a distinction between different groups is comparable to what happened under the Nazi regime, namely the population was divided into groups and received “special treatment” on the grounds of where their group was in that ranking.’ As a second point she adds that Koenigs was a political opponent of the Nazi regime and for that reason should be considered as a victim of persecution. The applicant deduces from this that the burden of proof of the involuntary nature of the loss of possession should be reversed in favour of Koenigs. The Committee does not agree with this conclusion because she has not been able to qualify Koenigs as a victim of persecution as referred to in the policy framework as adopted by the Dutch government and parliament. In this regard the Committee refers to what it has considered under numbers V.3 to V.7 inclusive. There is, incidentally, no conflict with the Constitution and the principle of equality since the reversal of the burden of proof has been accepted for a limited group of people as compensation for the fact that in many cases they have lost items of evidence. There is thus not a discriminatory criterion, but a precautionary measure to compensate for a disadvantage.

VI.3. The third point the applicant raises is that the Koenigs collection should be designated as a ‘Jewish collection’ and that the transfer to Van Beuningen for NLG 1,000,000 should not be considered as a normal transaction. A key issue in the assessment of the present request is whether Koenigs lost his collection involuntarily as a result of a specific threat or coercion from the Nazi regime. Van Beuningen acquired the collection from L&R, and so it is not possible to accept the assertion that the facts and circumstances relating to this transaction can have implications in respect of Koenigs. The Committee refers here to what was considered above under V.9 to V.11 inclusive.

VI.4. In her fourth point, the applicant argues that the Committee did not base its advice of 3 November 2003 about case RC 1.6 on objective valuations. The Committee takes the view that exact data about objective valuations, in so far as it is possible to reconstruct them, are not necessary for the present request for advice.

VI.5. The applicant’s fifth point is an objection to consideration 15 in the advice of 3 November 2003 about case RC 1.6 on the grounds that the loan Koenigs was given in 1931 was not granted for purely economic reasons. The Committee passes over this objection because it is not crucial to the assessment of the present request for advice to know why Koenigs borrowed money from L&R in 1931 since the debt position has to be designated as an established fact, thanks in part to the newly submitted documents.

VI.6. In her sixth and seventh points, the applicant contends that the liquidation of L&R and Koenigs subsequently giving his collection in payment were ‘sham transactions’ and that giving the collection in payment violated article 1200 of the old Dutch Civil Code. The Committee has not addressed this contention because an opinion about it and the possible implications for the present request are outside the scope of its powers, as explained in consideration V.8.

VI.7. The applicant’s eighth point is that the actions of Van Beuningen, Hannema and Posse served to obstruct Koenigs’s intended export of the collection, and in this way to keep the collection available to sell to Hitler. Whatever the case may be, it does not follow from this that there was a direct link between an express threat or coercion from the Nazi regime and the loss of possession by Koenigs .

VI.8. The applicant’s ninth point furthermore describes giving Koenigs’s collection in payment as a sham transaction ‘as a result of crafty teamwork by Van Beuningen, Hannema and Posse’. The Committee understands this contention to mean that the aim of this ‘crafty teamwork’ was that L&R would sell the Koenigs collection at a very low price to Van Beuningen (and not to Museum Boymans), after which Van Beuningen could sell and supply part of it to Posse/Hitler at a price that was higher than what he paid for the entire collection. Whatever the case may be, it has not become plausible that the said people were involved in Koenings giving his collection in payment to L&R. As regards the rest, the Committee refers to considerations V.9 and V.10 for the alleged ‘sham transaction’.

VI.9. In her tenth point the applicant asserts that the submission of declaration forms by Mrs Anna Koenigs on 21 September 1945 concerning 35 paintings is to be considered as the expression of a claim to those paintings. She reproaches the SNK for not doing anything about it. This reproach is not right. The Committee refers to the fact established in consideration IV.20 that Mrs Anna Koenigs stated in the 31 declaration forms she submitted that they were voluntary sales and also to the points addressed under V.14.

VI.10. The applicant’s eleventh point concerns the contention that the sale of the currently claimed paintings (at the end of April 1940 and around June 1940) took place ‘under pressure that arose from the compulsory sale of 9 April 1940, a sale by Jews who had been put under pressure’. A reversal of the burden of proof should therefore apply in favour of Koenigs. The Committee does not accept the contention. It refers in this regard in the first place to what is stated in consideration VI.3 and in the second instance to considerations V.3 to V.7 inclusive, which also apply correspondingly to the sale of the paintings. The ownership situation concerning these paintings is furthermore extremely uncertain, as explained above in consideration V.12.

VI.11. Finally, in her twelfth point, the applicant condemns the attitude of Museum Boymans both then and now. According to her the museum should demonstrate that its acquisition of the remaining part of the Koenigs collection through a donation from Van Beuningen was in good faith. The Committee does not understand how what is being brought up here could lead to allowing the present request. The works currently being claimed do not belong to the part of the collection donated by Van Beuningen. Furthermore, the issue here is not the acquisition by Van Beuningen or the Museum Boymans Foundation, but the loss of possession by Koenigs to L&R. In so far as the applicant is aiming to assert that the actions of Hannema should be attributed to Museum Boymans, she is apparently making a link to the eighth and ninth points, which the Committee has already considered under numbers VI.7 and VI.8.